My name is Jordan Marzuki, live in Jakarta, Indonesia. I love take pictures and illustration and design. I’m more likely a person who like photography. I’ve been taking pictures since I was child, thanks to my mom for let me hold her camera.

 

Probably around 9, it was Kodak fun saver 35 instant. Disposable cameras is great invention back then.

 

Just like illustration and design, photography is one of several mediums to pour my imagination, it can be spontaneous or planned.

 

The parents quality time in the bed.

 

Shelby Lee Adams and Diane Arbus. They almost had similarity when taking pictures, it’s bizarre yet intriguing.

 

I was fascinated by Coen Brothers and Stanley Kubrick’s direction of photography and camera works. I find inspiration from films, and mostly history, world war ll, philosophy, foreign cultures, also when in the gloomy moods and low self esteem is the perfect situation to get inspired. I do enjoy making short film with friends and working on illustration.

 

I always love small simple cameras for work. Right now I’m using the OlympusPen E-P1. People always asking me “where’s your real camera?" I always said “this is all I got, nothing else". There’s a past short film project involving panning camera works, only skateboard is used as the equipment. Everything is independent and low budget.

 

‘Family Picture Perfect’ series is a satire of conservative family values. When you came to someone’s house, the first thing you saw is a framed photographs of their family. They may look perfect in harmony but no one really knows the truth behind. It is a story about a happy and delightful conservative family with their own definition of perfection. Hardworking dad, dedicated housewife, and obedient children. Parents are loving their daughters too much, contradicted by the adolescent daughters who never understand the meaning of devotedness. Each picture from the series has it‘s own family value interpretation, for example there were a scene of a wolf holding the daughters, the wolf is depicted as the unwanted stranger that could take the daughters away from their parents, I could explain every meaning for each image, but I want the audience to decipher their own interpretation.

 

I always obsessed with subtle surreal movies especially Jean-Pierre Jeunet‘s Delicatessen (1991) and Roy Andersson’s Songs From the Second Floor (2002), both are mostly inspired me on the settings of this shoot.

“Family Picture Perfect” is aimed for family and kids, I always concerned about the idea of using a contrasting image of kids fashion that should be bright, colorful and cheerful instead of dark, but if we look back children literature “Three Little Pigs", or German classic “Struwwelpeter”, they’re violent and dark but had effective storytelling for the dreadful truth but never lose moral of the story.

 

I just looking through the people around me because I’m not feeling like to work with stranger. Finding the right kids model is quite a work, most of them are too cheerful for the photoshoot. I use my grandparents’ house as the location. The house is also the place that i spent most during my childhood, it‘s easier to blend with the location because the place is highly sentimental for me. The set was intended to be natural as possible, every props used in the background is really there before.

 

The creative process took a quite a writing times for each image, two separated storyboards, one for the photoshoot, second is short film. The short film and photoshoot is almost quite the same flow, but the film is a process through the understanding of “Family Picture Perfect” while photos is just a metaphor of the family albums.

 

I‘m currently working for the art direction of my line The Balletcats. I’m planning to make full feature film.

ELLE DECORATION MAGAZINE, JANUARY 2014, WRITTEN BY GACANTI SWASTIKA

Tidak perlu menjadi seorang rocket scientist untuk menciptakan mesin yang membuat kita menjelajah waktu dan angkasa. Studio Balletcats merupakan lorong waktu itu, menjadikan manusia bak ilmuwan dan penjelajah era. 

The Balletcats terbentuk dari kolaborasi dua pekerja kreatif, Jordan Marzuki dan partnernya, Fatriana Zukhra. Awalnya merupakan proyek kuliah desain produk yang dikerjakan dengan manual hand illustration satu per satu langsung di atas T-shirt. Produk Balletcats lalu dijual melalui webstore. Strategi penjualan yang dikerjakan Jordan yakni me­ nyelipkan konsep dengan cara mencampurkan gaya storytelling ke dalam karyanya. Sedang­ kan Petty, sapaan akrab Fatriana, mengurus marketing strategy dan social-public relation. Balletcats menjadi salah satu pionir saat awal terbentuknya industri kreatif indie di Jakarta. 

 

Saat ini, Jordan sedang mempersiapkan sebuah lm pendek dan desain produk berkon­sep artwork yang terinspirasi oleh cendikiawan pada abad ke 18 dan 19. Menurutnya, ilustrasi manual adalah satu­satunya cara untuk men­ dokumentasikan objek karena keterbatasan teknologi. “Saya mengangkat topik ini untuk membawa kembali seni yang dulunya diguna­ kan untuk ilmu pengetahuan,” tutur Jordan. Keduanya menyambut ELLE Decoration di rumah yang sekaligus menjadi tempat mereka mencipta dan menggarap karya. Ruang kreatif ini menyerupai laboratorium percobaan yang dipenuhi oleh hot toys seperti serdadu Jerman dengan detail seragam yang apik, pop-up book Alfred Hitchcock yang ditemukannya di bazaar buku, topeng berkepala kelinci, hingga jarum dan suntikan bekas milik kakek Petty yang seorang ahli bedah. Perasaan aneh sekaligus rasa ingin tahu yang muncul membuat siapapun yang datang ingin menjelajah isi laboratorium, layaknya seorang ilmuwan. “Sama seperti kucing, they are curious creatures,” jelas Petty sambil tertawa. 

 

Jelaskan diri Anda dalam lima kata? 

Inspirasi dalam berkarya?

Apa definisi kreatif menurut Anda? 

Selanjutnya, apa yang akan Anda kerjakan? 

There is something graceful yet mysterious about cats. They are intelligent and elegant creatures that have fascinated mankind for centuries. Jordan Marzuki, a graphic designer and filmmaker from Jakarta, who is currently studying at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland, has loved cats ever since he was a child. “I think that cats are cool and mysterious,” he says. “If cats were humans, they would probably be the most confusing persons you’d ever meet. Besides, they have very beautiful-looking features and a shape that can be represented in unlimited possibilities. I currently have three cats at home; they were all stray cats that we rescued.”

 

In 2008, Jordan took part in a college flea market, for which the students had to sell their own creations. That’s when he came up with the initial idea for The Balletcats. “The name wasn’t inspired by the Spandau Ballet, but rather from my own cat that had a very unusual ballet pose every time he was asleep,” Jordan explains. “I started selling hand-painted shirts and sweaters, and it turned out to be a good start.” His designs were popular among the flea market crowd that Jordan decided to take this project to the next level by partnering with Fatriana Zukhra, a fashion business student.

 

Together, they create an eye-catching and unique collection of clothes for both adults and kids with feline designs. They range from T-shirts with prints of cats striking a pose, to cat-related quotes such as “The entire cat population is my best friend,” or “I hate humans, I prefer cats.” While the clothes account for the biggest part of the collection, The Balletcats also offers other products on its website, like prints and bags. “We carry a variety of items,” Jordan says. “Basically we love to make sweatshirts, most of them obviously for cat lovers, but our customers love surprises, and that’s why we include other products as well.”

 

Inspiration, Jordan adds, is everywhere around him. “I always take notes wherever I go,” he says. “Together with my partner, we brainstorm our ideas. Sometimes it happens that our ideas are too diabolical, so we have to abandon them in the creative process. We also hardly have any collaboration with other illustrators or designers because we would like to keep our style consistent.”

 

It seems just right, then, that every now and then a giant lizard slithers through the house he shares with his architect father, Pris, and three cats. Or that there’s an occasional visit from “some kind of stinky animal – what’s it called, a skunk. We’re sitting on the edge of a swamp and have almost everything here in the way of wildlife”. The Marzuki family had been living on the outskirts of Jakarta for 15 years before knocking down their house and building a new one. Jordan felt sad, he says, to see the old place demolished, “but excited as well. It was a collaboration between me and my mother and father. We thought it would be good if we could make somewhere for my father to work after he retired. And my mother had always wanted an open space with good circulation of air.” Sadly, Jordan’s mum died two years ago, so she didn’t have much o fa chance to enjoy the new house. And Jordan’s dad doesn’t get to spend much time there now – he’s still going to his office every day. “If you work outside the home, you can spend two or three hours a day traveling because of the traffic.”

 

Jordan, who studied in Jakarta and Switzerland, usually has the place to himself. As soon as it was built, he gave up working at a design firm and set up his office at home. “It’s so unproductive commuting in Jakarta,” he says. “I know I’m putting an emphasis on traffic jams, but that’s how it is here. I also like the fact that if I’ve finished some work, I can go to my bed for five or 10 minutes.” And that’s only a step or two from his work area - his part of the house consists of one room with a mezzanine level. His bed is at one end of the room; desks, designed by his father and made locally, are at the other, and in between are shelves full of his stuff. “It’s basically a one—stop service for living,” he says. “You can sleep here, you can work here, you can do anything here.” When clients visit, Jordan says, “I remove the bed. I want to move all my personal stuff up into the mezzanine level, but at the moment that’s used for storage.”